1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of mobile computing systems and particularly to the control application of the soft and hardware components building the system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile computing systems are made up of a number of mobile devices (MD) which might be connected to a network through different means of communication like wired or wireless networks. Mobile devices might be specialized devices like a mobile telephone or a small computing device with limited capabilities like a notebook. The mobile devices are supported through specialized applications which perform dedicated tasks on behalf of and in conjunction with the mobile device.
The method for controlling the operation of the mobile devices, i.e. the control application, must satisfy severe conditions with respect to dynamic configuration, adaptation and flexibility. These conditions and requirements origin from several sources. The power management for the used small devices requires the observation of the battery power and the flexible adaptation of all system components. The small set of available system resources (like storage space, main memory, processing power and communication bandwidth) require the dynamic configuration and adaptation of the running software and control. The interaction with the mobile environment and the user requires several parallel and independent threads of execution which enhances the complexity of configuration, adaptation and management of said components. Therefore, a way to control the mobile device and its operation in an efficient way is desirable.
Since the invention of the programming language SIMULA in 1967 object-oriented programming has been used to build flexible and modular applications. In object-oriented programming a program is built out of small objects which offer a set of methods to the other object which can be invoked. This set of methods is called the interface of the object. The interface of the object comprises all commands to control the object. Since the mid-eighties the object-oriented approach was extended to component-based programming. In component-based programming programs are assembled from small independent software components. An example for such a component-based programming is e.g. Microsoft OLE, OpenDoc and JAVA Beans. Usually, the software components support two different sets of interfaces: The first interface is a generic interface which supports the assembly of the components to build a running application. The second set of interfaces comprises specific interfaces which relate to the particular task to be performed by the corresponding component.
From EP-A-365 115 an object identifier generator for distributed computer systems is known. Thereby the nodes, as well as the connected devices and associated processes, data bases, and other objects, must be uniquely labeled or named such that the object can be positively identified throughout the entire distributed system.
From EP-A-483 037 an object-oriented programming system including a storage means, a data processor and an application operating on said data processor is known, wherein an object in said storage means defines a data structure, said object having at least one attribute containing data and an associated method for performing an action on said object in response to a message from said application.